Amber: Anand steams on, Vallejo beats Kramnik

3/25/2005 – After a rest day of exquisite meals and laser shoot-up games round five of the blindfold-rapid chess tournament in Monaco saw Anand winning his mini-match against Ivanchuk with 1½-½ to take a 2½ point lead over the field. The sensation came when bottom seed Francisco Vallejo defeated Vladimir Kramnik in their blindfold game. Illustrated report.

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The Fourteenth Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess Tournament will take place
at the Monte Carlo Grand Hôtel in Monaco, from 19th to 31st March 2005.
The Dutch billionaire J.J. van Oosterom is the exclusive sponsor of this event.

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Round five

Wednesday was a free day in Monaco. Some of the players used it to catch up
on sleep and basking next to the pool, others took part in the outings organised
by the Max Euwe Association.

One such event, which was attended by a surprising number of participants,
was lunch at the restaurant of Master Chef Jean-François Issautier,
the proud owner of no less than two Michelin stars.

Between one and three stars can be given by the Michelin Guide to restaurants,
one already making a restaurant "legendary". Losing a star can ruin
a restaurant.

The Michelin stars are one of the most snobbish awards in the universe.

After
the meal there was a visit to the Laser
Game in Nice, where players are paired up as two-men star shooters teams,
who try to kill everyone else with "laser" handguns. Many
years ago we remember the players at the Tilburg tournament doing the same.
At the time it was Judit Polgar who was a class of her own, as star shooter
Garry Kasparov freely admitted. In Nice it was Peter Leko's wife Sofie, who
was the most agile and vicious killer. Evgeny Bareev came in a close second.

In the evening there was (another) fine dinner at the Monte Carlo Cabaret,
in one of the wings of the world famous Casino, and after that an exciting
show called Spirit of the Dance, in which according to the tournament
report "fifteen ultra-fit boys and girls dancing their hearts and lungs
out to pumping music." Unfortunately no pictures are provided. Booo!

Star shooters: Sofie and Peter Leko

Blindfold

Bareev-Svidler

0-1

Gelfand-Morozevich

1/2

Van Wely-Leko

1/2

Kramnik-Vallejo

0-1

Ivanchuk-Anand

1/2

Shirov-Topalov

1/2

Rapid

Svidler-Bareev

1/2

Morozevich-Gelfand

0-1

Leko-Van Wely

1/2

Vallejo-Kramnik

1/2

Anand-Ivanchuk

1-0

Topalov-Shirov

1-0

The chess resumed on Thursday afternoon, with same old same old. Vishy Anand
continued his own private star shooter thing, dismantling veteran Vassily Ivanchuk
by 1½-½ and increasing his lead over the mortals in this tournament
by 2½ points. Peter Svidler scored likewise against Evgeny Bareev (who
should give serious thought to the Laser Game) to move into second place. Svidler
and Bareev are friends, both having assisted Vladimir Kramnik in his classical
chess world championship match against Peter Leko. But if you play through
their blindfold game you will see that friendship ends at the tournament board.

Loek van Wely had a good chance to take a point off Peter Leko in their blindfold
game (31.Nf7+ and 32.Nd6 wins an exchange). After that he came close to losing,
but managed to hold a draw. The rapid game was also drawn. Boris Gelfand beat
Alexander Morozevich in their rapid game after drawing in the blindfold. Veselin
Topalov won his first game in Amber 2005, beating Shirov in their rapid encounter.
Their blindfold game was a draw.

Vladimir Kramnik in his blindfold game against Francisco Vallejo

The sensation of the round was the black piece victory by Francisco ("Paco")
Vallejo over third seed Vladimir Kramnik. Vallejo had just lost four games
in succession and decided to play the rare Löwenthal Variation.

The last white move was a mistake, since Black can win the game with 17...Qf6!
threatening devastating 18...f4 with the rook unable to retreat because of
mate (e.g. 19.Re1 Qxh4+ 20.Kg1 Qh2+ 21.Kf2 g3+ 22.Ke2 Nd4#). White has no proper
defence. But Vallejo missed the chance and played 17...Rxh4,
which it turned out was also enough to win: 18.Rc1 Qd6 19.Ke1 Rh1 20.Qe2
Nd4 21.Qf2 f4 22.Nxe4 Qg6 23.Ng3 fxg3 24.Rxg3 Qe4+ 25.Kd1 Nef5 26.Rd3 g3 0-1.

See also

12/30/2017 – The "King Salman World Blitz & Rapid Championships 2017" in Riyadh from Decemer 26th to 30th. At the half way point of the Blitz Championship, the defending champ Sergey Karjakin leads with 9 / 11. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is a half point back followed by Peter Svidler and a trio of Chinese: Wang, Ding and Yu on 8 / 11. In the Women's Pia Cramling has a full point lead with 9½ / 11. Watch live with Rounds 11 to 22 from 12:00 Noon CET (6:00 AM EST) on Saturday with commentary by E. Miroshnichenko & WGM K. Tsatsalashvili.

See also

12/6/2017 – Imagine this: you tell a computer system how the pieces move — nothing more. Then you tell it to learn to play the game. And a day later — yes, just 24 hours — it has figured it out to the level that beats the strongest programs in the world convincingly! DeepMind, the company that recently created the strongest Go program in the world, turned its attention to chess, and came up with this spectacular result.

Video

On this 60 mins video we are going to concentrate on a simple, very solid idea in the main line Scandinavian, which even Magnus Carlsen has used to win games. Black focusses on making his life easy in the opening and forces White to work very hard to get advantage – but it is doubtful if White can get an advantage. Club players are always on the lookout for effective, time-saving solutions and here we have just that. Accompany FIDE Senior Trainer and IM Andrew Martin on this 60 mins video. You can learn a new opening system in 60 mins and start to play it with confidence on the very same day!